The good news, my white people, is that you're still growing and own a large part of this great nation's demographics. There are 223.6 million of you in America, according to a just-released parsing of U.S. Census data, and you still make up about 72 percent of the landscape. You increased by six percent in the aughts.

The bad news is that a lot of your growth during the last decade was really the result of brown people who are really racially white, sort of. Sorry to burst your pinata.

We'll explain:

The Census lets Latino folks also say they're white (or black for that matter) because Latino is not a race but an ethnicity. While some of us do indeed have African heritage, particularly those of us of the Cuban and Puerto Rican variety, most Latinos in the United States have Mexican heritage.

And that means white.

White you say? Si.

People indigenous to the American continental lands are technically white, some stoned anthropologist decided long ago. And while your average “Indian” Mexican actually looks way more Asian (and probably came from Asia at some point in the distant past, either by surfboard or jet ski), the scientific community has spoken.

(And we dare not call bullshit on the entire concept of “race,” — men and women are farther apart genetically than any different races — lest we be put in our place by the man).

Therefore, Census officials say:

Whites who reported one race and identified as Hispanic accounted for 70 percent of the growth of the white alone-or-in-combination population. Multiple-race whites who identified as Hispanic accounted for another 4 percent of the growth of the white alone-or-in-combination population. Thus, Hispanics accounted for about three-fourths of the increase in the white alone-or-in-combination population.

You see, America, Latinos really are doing all the hard work around here. Just don't tell the Nazi Lowriders. They're confused enough as it is.

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

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